The Cambridge Crazies

To the man on the commuter rail: who were you once before you took to muttering to yourself in foreign tongues and staring at young women with a jack-o-lantern smile? You look like an unwashed grandfather, kind eyes glassed over, arthritic fingers quivering over a Styrofoam cup of weak black coffee. I think I’m afraid of you, for the mad ones with their liquid brains are everywhere, and they all want to hold your hand and I might be one of them someday, laughing in a subway tunnel, growing madder as parents hug their children tightly and look at me like I’m plagued as they pass by, like I pass you by.

Anne McCrery is a writer currently residing in Richmond, Virginia and attending Virginia Commonwealth University.